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The US government should spend at least $1.25 billion "to invest in Western-based alternatives to Chinese equipment providers Huawei and ZTE," a bipartisan group of six US senators said yesterday.

The senators submitted legislation called the Utilizing Strategic Allied (USA) Telecommunications Act to make that happen, arguing that the US must counter the Chinese government's investments in the telecom sector. The money would come from spectrum-auction proceeds, and the $1.25 billion in grants would be spread out over 10 years. The money would support development of new 5G technology, with a focus on equipment that complies with open standards to ensure "multi-vendor network equipment interoperability."

The senators' announcement said:

Heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, Huawei is poised to become the leading commercial provider of 5G, with far-reaching effects for US economic and national security. With close ties to the Communist Party of China, Chinese state-directed technology companies present unacceptable risks to our national security and to the integrity of information networks globally. However, US efforts to convince foreign partners to ban Huawei from their networks have stalled amid concerns about a lack of viable, affordable alternatives.

The senators who sponsored the legislation are Mark R. Warner (D-Va.); Richard Burr (R-N.C.); Bob Menendez (D-N.J.); Marco Rubio (R-Fla.); Michael Bennet (D-Colo.); and John Cornyn (R-Texas). Burr and Warner are the chair and vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, while Cornyn, Rubio, and Bennet are members of that committee. Menendez is ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Rubio is also a member of the Foreign Relations Committee.

"Every month that the US does nothing, Huawei stands poised to become the cheapest, fastest, most ubiquitous global provider of 5G, while US and Western companies and workers lose out on market share and jobs," Warner said.

Burr said it would be "disastrous if Huawei, a company that operates at the behest of the Chinese government, military, and intelligence services, is allowed to take over the 5G market unchecked."

Two funds

The senators' bill would create a Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund of at least $750 million and a Multilateral Telecommunications Security Fund of at least $500 million.

The $750 million fund would be administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), but the Federal Communications Commission and other agencies would help establish criteria for awarding grants. Those grants would pay for research into software, hardware, and microprocessor technology "that will enhance competitiveness" in 5G "and successor wireless technology supply chains." This fund would also support "development and deployment of open interface standards-based compatible, interoperable equipment," including equipment that meets the Open Radio Access Network standard (O-RAN). Individual grants could be as high as $20 million each.

The senators said they want to support O-RAN to "allow for alternative vendors to enter the market for specific network components, rather than having to compete with Huawei end-to-end."

The $500 million multilateral fund would be administered by the Secretary of State and focus on projects involving the United States and other countries. The Secretary of State would have to strike "agreement[s] with foreign government partners" to fund projects that "support the development and adoption of secure and trusted telecommunications technologies." Under this plan, the US would try to get funding commitments from countries involved in the proposed joint projects.

“Race” to 5G?

The senators said these funds will help the US win "the race for 5G." The Federal Communications Commission's Republican majority has repeatedly cited the "race to 5G" as justification for eliminating federal rules and preempting municipal regulations that cover deployment of wireless equipment in US cities and towns.

Whether there is actually a "race" between the US and China when it comes to deploying 5G to each country's residents is debatable. The US switching from 4G to 5G slightly later than China wouldn't prevent the US from getting the benefits of 5G, such as they are: carriers admit that 5G networks based on millimeter-wave frequencies won't come close to covering the whole US and that 5G on lower-frequency bands will only be slightly faster than 4G.

Further Reading

Moreover, the US faces more pressing problems because many rural areas don't even have consistent 4G access, and most US homes lack fiber broadband. Fiber, in addition to providing high-speed home Internet, is crucial for supplying bandwidth to 5G networks. But ISPs don't want to spend the money to deploy nationwide fiber, and the FCC's planned $20 billion rural-broadband fund will pay ISPs to deploy either fiber or services that are much slower and come with restrictive data caps.

Further Reading

But for both mobile and home broadband networks, expanding alternatives to Huawei and ZTE network gear is important for meeting the US government's goal of phasing out Chinese telecom equipment. That's particularly true for small, rural ISPs that have relied on the Chinese companies' offerings.

The FCC in November voted unanimously to ban Huawei and ZTE equipment in projects paid for by the FCC's Universal Service Fund (USF), saying the equipment could have backdoors installed at the behest of the Chinese government. This ban affects only future projects and the use of federal funding to maintain existing equipment, but the FCC may also eventually require removal of Huawei and ZTE gear from networks that have already been built. Huawei has sued the FCC in an attempt to overturn the ban, saying the commission "fail[ed] to substantiate its arbitrary findings with evidence or sound reasoning or analysis."

How carriers, particularly small carriers, will pay for a move away from Chinese equipment is an open question. The FCC is seeking public comment on how to pay for removing and replacing the equipment.

The new bill for 5G research doesn't allocate funding directly toward replacing Chinese equipment in current networks, but senators said the bill "create[s] a transition plan for the purchase of new equipment by carriers that will be forward-compatible with forthcoming O-RAN equipment so small and rural carriers are not left behind." If the bill passes, recipients of FCC grants for replacing Chinese equipment with new 5G technology would have to submit plans outlining how they will switch to standards-based equipment.

149 Reader Comments

Let's just say that I'll believe it when I see it. We've seen similar claims from every new WiFi and mobile network tech. I'm sure it's better (would be pretty amazing if it managed to be worse than LTE) but it will be interesting how long it will take until we see an actual improvement for the users.

To be clear you probably won't see it and that is a good thing. Speeds will go up a bit and that is all you will see from your single device. The tower will have more aggregate throughput to share among all users so that means your speeds won't get progressively slower as data demands exceed the tower capacity.

It really is that simple.

1) Spectrum is finite.2) Data demands are continually increasing.3) To keep up with data demands towers need higher throughput.4) To get more throughput from the same spectrum required higher efficiency = 5G

If everything works you won't see anything. You will continue to see fast reliable connections despite the fact that the demand on the tower increases every year.

Without 5G as data demands continually increase the tower would get more and more congested each year. It would still be LTE but the service would feel worse and worse.

We're on fixed wireless LTE (upper S-band, 3.6 GHz I think) for the home connection, with the district's one monopoly provider, and it is *already* getting worse each year as more subscribers are added to the tower. It still pulls the same rated speeds, but it hiccups more often, and drops more packets during peak evening times.

5G fixed wireless needs to come, like, *today*, for those of us who live just far enough from downtown that there's no fibre or DOCSIS available.

Why is 5G so important that we need to subsidize it? If the technology has merit why not let technology companies fund the development that they will then make money from?

because it IS going to be used globally, every nation every carrier. 5G will displace 2G, 3G, and yes eventually LTE networks. In time nobody will deploy anything but 5G hardware. It has been heavily subsidized by China so the default scenario would be the entire world uses Chinese telecom hardware for the next decade or so. That would also mean that when whatever comes along to replace 5G will almost certainly be developed and produced by China due to nobody else producing hardware for a decade or more. That means China remains the dominant telecom equipment provider for everything that comes after that.

Should we subsidize? Will subsidizing development this late help any? I have no idea. Honestly we should have been having this debate five years ago when 5G was entering into final draft specification.

Unfortunately, you can apply that subsidy logic to anything! The subsidy wars have no end. What will you do if China subsidizes CPUs? Phones? Computers? Cars? Are you prepared to race them all the way, and at what point would you stop the corporate welfare? And which corporate entity do you choose to susidize? Cisco? Juniper? The startups? And what happens to their competitors?

The US Government already subsidizes too many private enterprises, from war to agriculture to every other thing in-between. For long term macro-economic health, we should be looking to decrement that effort, not increment it. You either want to have a robust capitalist Ecosystem, or you don't. Leave the subsidy to China. If there is $$ to be made in 5G, and am sure there is, private corporations will find a way to compete.

Why is 5G so important that we need to subsidize it? If the technology has merit why not let technology companies fund the development that they will then make money from?

because it IS going to be used globally, every nation every carrier. 5G will displace 2G, 3G, and yes eventually LTE networks. In time nobody will deploy anything but 5G hardware. It has been heavily subsidized by China so the default scenario would be the entire world uses Chinese telecom hardware for the next decade or so. That would also mean that when whatever comes along to replace 5G will almost certainly be developed and produced by China due to nobody else producing hardware for a decade or more. That means China remains the dominant telecom equipment provider for everything that comes after that.

Should we subsidize? Will subsidizing development this late help any? I have no idea. Honestly we should have been having this debate five years ago when 5G was entering into final draft specification.

Unfortunately, you can apply that subsidy logic to anything! The subsidy wars have no end. What will you do if China subsidizes CPUs? Phones? Computers? Cars? Are you prepared to race them all the way, and at what point would you stop the corporate welfare? And which corporate entity do you choose to susidize? Cisco? Juniper? The startups? And what happens to their competitors?

The US Government already subsidizes too many private enterprises, from war to agriculture to every other thing in-between. For long term macro-economic health, we should be looking to decrement that effort, not increment it. You either want to have a robust capitalist Ecosystem, or you don't. Leave the subsidy to China. If there is $$ to be made in 5G, and am sure there is, private corporations will find a way to compete.

If your competitor is subsidized, and you are not, then - all else being equal - they can undercut your cost and dominate the market, putting you in a Very Bad Spot business-wise.

China is not going to stop subsidizing Huawei & friends. America can ban Huawei gear, but if nobody else does so, then you have a pop. 327m country saying "Huawei is evil and illegal" and 194 countries with 7b people saying "yeah, you can buy stuff from Huawei".

My personal opinion of the idea of subsidizing a key industry, versus letting it thrive or die on capitalism alone, is irrelevant. The above logic is what these senators, and the American companies they're hoping to support, see.

I don't trust the Chinese government not getting into Huawei's core development but I'm sure the CIA does the so do all the other major intelligence organizations. However US government organizations are supposed to use IT hardware and software products that are validated. Hence this whole Huawei business seems to have an alternative motive unless the the belief is that all the government validation programs are worthless.

Mildly off topic, but, the final cost of the war in Iraq has been realistically estimated to be at least 2 TRILLION dollars (don't quibble with me over a couple hundred billion here). Can you imagine what kind of productive stimulus projects could have been funded with that money (nevermind things like improving public schools).

Why is 5G so important that we need to subsidize it? If the technology has merit why not let technology companies fund the development that they will then make money from?

Because the list of leading companies in providing, things like 5G stations and related products, includes two Chinese companies and zero US companies.

And because of that I guess the politicians in the US have realized how much hardware made by Chinese companies is already in the world's mobile networks and how much more is likely to be added as the world moves to 5G.

I don't really get the defenders of Huawei in this story, or why a lot of commentators seem to have no problem with 1 company having a monopoly on the equipment that runs critical part of mobile networks around the world.

This could be regarded as "state aid" to US companies. A topic which Europe and USA have butted heads on more than one occasion.

I predict that this will not end quickly or cleanly.

Why would Europe be upset. The three non Chinese companies currently producing 5G tower radios are Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. Notice which country is not represented? Every 5G tower being built in the US will used radios from European or Japanese Korean companies.

In WWII the US had huge shipbuilding capacity, after WWII this started to face competition from Japan and Korea which had subsidies and favorable exchange rates. The US had a subsidy of a few billion dollars per year to keep our shipbuilding capacity at least somewhat competitive. In the 80's Reagan got rid of these subsidies - no problem at first as these shipyards got business from naval expansion. After the naval expansion the US shipbuilding declined precipitously . . . when China got in the game with even bigger subsidies the US civilian industry was just about wiped out. China's shipbuilding industry is much larger and thus more efficient, this has helped them build up their navy. 100's thousands of highly paid, skilled jobs gone.

I don't really get the defenders of Huawei in this story, or why a lot of commentators seem to have no problem with 1 company having a monopoly on the equipment that runs critical part of mobile networks around the world.

There's no monopoly, you're just being misled into believing a lie.

Ericsson, Samsung and Nokia also provide 5G gear.

Monopoly doesn't mean there is absolutely no other choice - it means there is no *close* substitute, and when you can undercut the competition such that they cannot compete fairly then you effectively *is* a monopoly.

Huawei is subsidized by the state money printing machine such that they can undercut the competition by a huge margin - that is why they are winning the majority of the contracts by price which creates an extremely strong feedback loop to break ("the other country is using Huawei so they must be good/the other companies don't have any projects to show their deployment experience/our budget is limited we can only choose Huawei" etc), which sets up a tough barrier to entry and hence is effectively a monopoly on supplying 5G infrastructure.

Huawei being a monopoly on 5G is not a lie, you are just dealing with absolute textbook definitions which rarely exists in reality. If you use the same textbook definition, then Windows is also not a monopoly on desktop OS in the past two decades because MacOS and Linux *exists*, but you would have a very difficult time trying to defend that definition especially with how many court rulings basically says otherwise.

This could be regarded as "state aid" to US companies. A topic which Europe and USA have butted heads on more than one occasion.

I predict that this will not end quickly or cleanly.

Why would Europe be upset. The three non Chinese companies currently producing 5G tower radios are Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. Notice which country is not represented? Every 5G tower being built in the US will used radios from European or Japanese companies.

I think you meant Korean here.

Either way, South Korea and China aren't exactly the best buddies either, so Samsung would be quite happy to take up the slack.

Spectrum is finite. Data demands are continually increasing. The only way you get more throughput out of the same amount of spectrum is higher spectral efficiency (bits/Hz). 5G does that.

What a dumb misconception. The way to get more throughput out of the same amount of spectrum is to put up more base stations closer together. Another is to spatially isolate signals using directional antennas. 5G does little to boost raw spectral efficiency, which has been at a limit for a while.

Monopoly doesn't mean there is absolutely no other choice - it means there is no *close* substitute, and when you can undercut the competition such that they cannot compete fairly then you effectively *is* a monopoly.

Correct.

But that doesn't come close to describe the position of Huawei in the 5G market.There are at least 5 5G network equipment providers in the market, selling hardware and winning contracts: Ericsson (Sweden), Nokia (Finland), Samsung (South Korea) and Huawei and ZTE (China).And while Huawei is the largest their market share is even 50%.

Do you see us in Europe or South Koreans making a fuss about Huawei?You don't.

The real source of this fuss is that none of the 5 companies above is from the US.You (the American public) are being conned by politicians and lobbies.

Monopoly doesn't mean there is absolutely no other choice - it means there is no *close* substitute, and when you can undercut the competition such that they cannot compete fairly then you effectively *is* a monopoly.

Correct.

But that doesn't come close to describe the position of Huawei in the 5G market.There are at least 5 5G network equipment providers in the market, selling hardware and winning contracts: Ericsson (Sweden), Nokia (Finland), Samsung (South Korea) and Huawei and ZTE (China).And while Huawei is the largest their market share is even 50%.

Do you see us in Europe or South Koreans making a fuss about Huawei?You don't.

The real source of this fuss is that none of the 5 companies above is from the US.You (the American public) are being conned by politicians and lobbies.

The only reason no other country is making a big fuss is because no other country has a big mouth shameless idiot like Trump as their president, so they stick to an old and familiar political tactic of not trying to piss off China, least because all countries have close trade ties with China and China is not afraid to throw their weight around just the same as the US does. eg

The other countries are happy to let US fight it out with China and they watch from the sidelines away from the mud slinging. If you think that only the US is worried about Huawei you'd be naive. Pointing out South Korea being silent is especially silly - did you forget that South Korea is just a stone throw away from China and China is actually friendly with North Korea? Last time when South Korea erected a missile defense with a radar range that got into China China retailated with so much force that it kicked out and banned a whole bunch of South Korea businesses and Korean celebrities including Korean conglomerate giant Lotte from the Chinese mainland causing a huge lost to these companies and Korean's hot entertainment export business, and all the South Koreans could do was hardly even making a whimper in response (probably a reason why the South Korean president decides to villianise the Japanese instead, gotta have a foreign enemy to play the nationalism card, but it just can't be China), South Korea would be the last country to get openly hostile with China because they aren't remotely equal in power to have a fair negotiation while geographically located in an awkward position to have to take the full brunt of the CCP force if it comes to be.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you lived in China? No right? Hate to break it to you but our entire FCC and government has a massive revolving door with telecom among other industries. If we're going to point to party leaders in China being too friendly with Huawei, I'm sure I can find you a "retired" democrat or republican doing the exact same shit, and probably making more money at it then his Chinese counterpart.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you lived in China? No right? Hate to break it to you but our entire FCC and government has a massive revolving door. If we're going to point to party leaders in China being too friendly with Huawei, I'm sure I can find you a "retired" democrat or republican doing the exact same shit, and probably making more money at it then his Chinese counterpart.

Yes, I have. Hate to break it to you, I'm ethnically Chinese. And no, the Chinese politicians are WAY more corrupt than the US counterparts.

Chinese politicians and party members deeply involved in corruption are regularly caught having hundreds of millions in CASH stashed in the basement like Mexican drug lords. So you can take that whataboutism and shove it.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you lived in China? No right? Hate to break it to you but our entire FCC and government has a massive revolving door. If we're going to point to party leaders in China being too friendly with Huawei, I'm sure I can find you a "retired" democrat or republican doing the exact same shit, and probably making more money at it then his Chinese counterpart.

Yes, I have. Hate to break it to you, I'm ethnically Chinese. And no, the Chinese politicians are WAY more corrupt than the US counterparts.

Chinese politicians are regularly caught having hundreds of millions in CASH stashed in the basement. So you can take that whataboutism and shove it.

You are ethnically Chinese... so no.. you haven't lived in China... you don't know shit.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you lived in China? No right? Hate to break it to you but our entire FCC and government has a massive revolving door. If we're going to point to party leaders in China being too friendly with Huawei, I'm sure I can find you a "retired" democrat or republican doing the exact same shit, and probably making more money at it then his Chinese counterpart.

Yes, I have. Hate to break it to you, I'm ethnically Chinese. And no, the Chinese politicians are WAY more corrupt than the US counterparts.

Chinese politicians are regularly caught having hundreds of millions in CASH stashed in the basement. So you can take that whataboutism and shove it.

You are ethnically Chinese... so no.. you haven't lived in China... you don't know shit.

I'm ethnically Chinese because I'm nationally Australian. I've spent my first 10 years of my life in China and worked another 7 years of my adult life doing business in China (selling facial recognition tech no less - I've dealt with the government), I'm also a native Chinese speaker. YOU don't know shit.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Have you lived in China? No right? Hate to break it to you but our entire FCC and government has a massive revolving door. If we're going to point to party leaders in China being too friendly with Huawei, I'm sure I can find you a "retired" democrat or republican doing the exact same shit, and probably making more money at it then his Chinese counterpart.

Yes, I have. Hate to break it to you, I'm ethnically Chinese. And no, the Chinese politicians are WAY more corrupt than the US counterparts.

Chinese politicians and party members deeply involved in corruption are regularly caught having hundreds of millions in CASH stashed in the basement like Mexican drug lords. So you can take that whataboutism and shove it.

I can't say about comparative levels of corruption between the two countries, but it's worth keeping in mind that the US has largely legalized and formalized activities that are considered corruption elsewhere. This makes any comparison rather tricky.

Having millions in cash at home is amateurish when you can setup shell corporations to hold the payments you've received, or when you can just deposit the checks directly into your bank account in full legality because you're a lobbyist or walked through the revolving door. We don't even enforce the most basic of lobbyist disclosure rules and campaign finance rules that we have on the book FFS.

The only reason no other country is making a big fuss is because no other country has a big mouth shameless idiot like Trump as their president, so they stick to an old and familiar political tactic of not trying to piss off China, least because all countries have close trade ties with China and China is not afraid to throw their weight around just the same as the US does. eg

The other countries are happy to let US fight it out with China and they watch from the sidelines away from the mud slinging. If you think that only the US is worried about Huawei you'd be naive. Pointing out South Korea being silent is especially silly - did you forget that South Korea is just a stone throw away from China and China is actually friendly with North Korea? Last time when South Korea erected a missile defense with a radar range that got into China China retailated with so much force that it kicked out and banned a whole bunch of South Korea businesses and Korean celebrities including Korean conglomerate giant Lotte from the Chinese mainland causing a huge lost to these companies and Korean's hot entertainment export business, and all the South Koreans could do was hardly even making a whimper in response (probably a reason why the South Korean president decides to villianise the Japanese instead, gotta have a foreign enemy to play the nationalism card, but it just can't be China), South Korea would be the last country to get openly hostile with China because they aren't remotely equal in power to have a fair negotiation while geographically located in an awkward position to have to take the full brunt of the CCP force if it comes to be.

And no, I'm not an American and I don't live in the US either, yet I think China/Huawei should be taken down a notch all the same because Huawei is too tightly knitted with the CCP and the CCP is a dangerous authortatraian regime that shouldn't gain too much power. It's too bad the world aren't willing to take a stand together and of all people to lead the charge it has to be a dumbass like Trump doing it for all the wrong reasons.

I note the presence of zero facts about the competition in the 5G market in your post.

The summary of your post:You've got a problem with the Chinese Government and therefore you're willing to eat shit by the spoonful as long it comes in a can labeled "Bad for China".

Like most everyone I am perfectly aware that China is ruled by an autocratic regime which has gotten worse in the last few years.That doesn't mean I'm willing to eat lies by the spoonful just because the liar said it's bad for China.

PS: The liar in question is perfectly willing to protect Chinese companies when it's convenient for him.During the term of another US president ZTE (another Chinese company) admitted to violating US sanctions on Iran and agreed to comply by stopping it, paying a fine and firing the executives responsible. ZTE then violated the agreement by promoting said executives and the US state department workers started the process to punish ZTE by forbidding US companies to sell to ZTE which would have killed ZTE.And then the current big mouth shameless idiot president intervened to give ZTE another chance. No relation to the big loan his business got from a Chinese bank at about the same time.

I don't trust the Chinese government not getting into Huawei's core development but I'm sure the CIA does the so do all the other major intelligence organizations. However US government organizations are supposed to use IT hardware and software products that are validated. Hence this whole Huawei business seems to have an alternative motive unless the the belief is that all the government validation programs are worthless.

I think that the short version is that the Federal Government wants to reduce the number of ISPs using significant amounts of Huawei equipment because using it majes it easier for someone to disrupt communications due to mass targeting vulnerabilities, whether it is the PRC or someone else. The chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, as the saying goes. Even in a mesh network, too many identical devices, or even just devices from the same manufacturer could cause problems.

Let's just say that I'll believe it when I see it. We've seen similar claims from every new WiFi and mobile network tech. I'm sure it's better (would be pretty amazing if it managed to be worse than LTE) but it will be interesting how long it will take until we see an actual improvement for the users.

To be clear you probably won't see it and that is a good thing. Speeds will go up a bit and that is all you will see from your single device. The tower will have more aggregate throughput to share among all users so that means your speeds won't get progressively slower as data demands exceed the tower capacity.

It really is that simple.

1) Spectrum is finite.2) Data demands are continually increasing.3) To keep up with data demands towers need higher throughput.4) To get more throughput from the same spectrum required higher efficiency = 5G

If everything works you won't see anything. You will continue to see fast reliable connections despite the fact that the demand on the tower increases every year.

Without 5G as data demands continually increase the tower would get more and more congested each year. It would still be LTE but the service would feel worse and worse.

We're on fixed wireless LTE (upper S-band, 3.6 GHz I think) for the home connection, with the district's one monopoly provider, and it is *already* getting worse each year as more subscribers are added to the tower. It still pulls the same rated speeds, but it hiccups more often, and drops more packets during peak evening times.

5G fixed wireless needs to come, like, *today*, for those of us who live just far enough from downtown that there's no fibre or DOCSIS available.

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but you may want to check out http://altheamesh.com. Incentivized mesh networks can be one of the most affordable (and secure, due to heavy use of wireguard encryption in Althea's case) ways to create ISP competition, whether the hardware is from Ubiquiti, MikroTik, Cambium, etc.

This could be regarded as "state aid" to US companies. A topic which Europe and USA have butted heads on more than one occasion.

I predict that this will not end quickly or cleanly.

Why would Europe be upset. The three non Chinese companies currently producing 5G tower radios are Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung. Notice which country is not represented? Every 5G tower being built in the US will used radios from European or Japanese companies.

I think you meant Korean here.

Either way, South Korea and China aren't exactly the best buddies either, so Samsung would be quite happy to take up the slack.